grain while
the rebels were in force, but who fled before the advance of Union
troops, and deserted their homes; while the fields of standing grain,
with the golden kernels ripe and almost rotting on the stalks, and the
cheerless-looking houses, tenanted only by women and children, told as
plainly of the poor Unionists, driven from home and family by the
'Border Guard' who so bravely 'defended the sacred soil.' With the
advance of the Union army came back hundreds of Union refugees from
Maryland; poor, half-starved men crept out to the roadside from their
hiding-places, and told the Union troops that they now first saw
daylight for several weeks; and the lonely yet brave women displayed
from their hovels the Union flags, the true 'Red, White, and Blue,'
which their loyalty had kept for months concealed. And as the army
tarried at Martinsburg, and reinforcements came in, the secret Unionists
avowed their real sentiments; the Union flag was displayed from many a
dwelling; and the fair hands of Martinsburg women stitched beautiful
banners, which, with words of eloquent loyalty, were presented to the
favorite Union regiments, and even now are cherished in Northern homes,
or in Union encampments, as mementos of the gratitude of Berkeley County
for its deliverance from the reign of terror. Yet how was the confidence
repaid which these loyal people thus reposed in Gen. Patterson? In less
than three weeks, not a Union soldier was left in Martinsburg, and
before the first of August they were withdrawn wholly from Berkeley and
Jefferson Counties. And the poor refugees who had returned to their
homes in good faith, and the loyalists who in equal good faith had
spoken out their true patriotism and their love of the Union, were left
to the tender mercies of the 'Berkeley Border Guard,' and such braves as
the Texan Rangers, the Mississippi Bowie-knives, and the Louisiana Tiger
Zouaves. Gray-headed men like Pendleton and Strother were dragged from
their homes to languish for weeks in Richmond jails, and the old reign
of terror was reestablished with renewed virulence. Shall we ask these
poor, deceived Unionists of Northern Virginia what they think of Gen.
Patterson, and of the success of his campaign? How can we estimate the
injury to the cause of the Union inflicted in this way alone by a
grossly inefficient Federal general?

There were other reasons than those already enumerated why Patterson
should have occupied Harper's Ferry at